


as cedars beside the waters

by meios



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Allusions to the Devil, Alternate Universe - Cults, Alternate Universe - Gods & Goddesses, Body Horror, Castration, Crying, God Jeonghan, God/Disciple Relationship, Human Sacrifice, M/M, Magic, Murder, Mute Seungcheol, Revenge, Scars, Slow Burn, Torture, Worship, kind of, lots of blood, tongue removal
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-05
Updated: 2019-01-23
Packaged: 2019-10-04 17:45:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17309033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meios/pseuds/meios
Summary: in this forest, dark and deep, a ritual takes place. blood is spilled, sacred words are chanted, and a god is summoned. but this god is not theirs, this god is no one's. no, the boy is his. sacrifices are claimed and revenge is made.E L E M E L E / E L E M E L E / E L E M E L E





	1. he shall eat up the nations that are his adversaries

_E L E M E L E / E L E M E L E / E L E M E L E_

 

Around him, there are murmurs of collective syllables that he does not understand, shallow pews lining an aisle he dares not dream of walking down, though he does so now—he is chained, incarcerated with a wide cage encircling his head. The open air of the temple does little to quell his overactive heartbeat, as wild as it may be, similar to the overgrowth that the forest has brought forth, threatening and intertwining in old portraits and stained glass, proclaiming majesty over humankind. There is magic in the atmosphere tonight: shadows bounce to-and-fro, flickering as flames against old stone walls.

 

He is pulled forward with such force as temptation that he is momentarily choked. His body is nude, chilled as if prepared and now just marinating in his own fears, for no, he is not afraid to admit that the tight fist resting in his chest is little more than anxiety, yet far more than unadulterated fear. His lungs feel shriveled, dry as Saharan land; the sound of a leaf crumbling beneath his bare foot is louder than his breathing.

 

Nude: he has been stripped of the very humanity that this place like a palace seems to lack, stripped of his clothing and bathed in mud and sticks, in the moss that grows on the stones here. He walks the long walk with his heart in his throat; his fawn legs tremble and quiver as he stumbles over shallow steps. Pushed, shoved to his knees, he refuses to make a sound, mouth pursed and lips thin.

 

And the din increases:

 

            _M I L O N / I R A G O / L A M A L_

_O G A R I / N O L I M / D O R E H_

_O R I R E / R I N I R / E R I R O_

And again. Again, it repeats until the cacophony grows as a hurricane, many voices becoming one, as legion, as souls—he grinds his teeth, jaw clicking, as his cage is lifted. There is a hand, and it lifts his chin with coarse fingertips, reverent as a king to a slave, and attached to the hand is an arm, a shoulder, a neck, a man.

 

            _M I L O N / I R A G O / L A M A L_

In the shadows of the forest and of the temple, he cannot see much, eyes unfocused, dilating and undoing their own work. His tongue feels heavy in his mouth; there are glowing eyes within this shadowed visage, yellow as streetlights, lighthouses on cliffs. He opens his mouth to speak, but the man does not let him—thick fingers in his mouth, searching and prying, as if he is a cave and this man, this not-man, is a would-be spelunker.

 

His tongue. Caught between his index and middle finger, the muscle flails like a bass on a line, and the sound the boy makes is guttural, inhuman, gaze like fine China plates, milky white, cold. He struggles to move away, back coming into fierce contact with the legs of others. Men, women, five of them convene around him, chanting.

 

            _O G A R I / N O L I M / D O R E H_

 

Hardwood and leaves plant marks into his knees, his shins; the boy arches his back as the man tugs harder on his tongue, eyes blinking rapidly. His vision is watery, hazy, led only by the stretch and the pull, monotonous, as the man leads him to straighten his spine, aching as a dog for a treat, and there is no emotion in the man’s shining eyes, no fear, no humanity. There is only light.

 

Up the steps, the man guides him to a slab of rock, a small marble pedestal settled beside it. As if levitating, the boy is stretched up and up and up onto the stone, forced down by an invisible force like many palms, thousands, resting on every square inch of his flesh and bone. It is cold to the touch, chilling, like the heat of his breath is to the man’s hand—if it were fire, he is certain that they would all burn.

 

He cannot see what the man retrieves from pedestal, only hears the scrape of metal on marble as dust settles in around them.

 

            _O R I R E / R I N I R / E R I R O_

 

He screws his eyes shut as the grip on his tongue grows akin to a vice, sharp nails drilling deep into the muscle, drool leaking from the corners of his mouth. He coughs, pulling back only to be brought back to his spot; his head is slammed against the slab. In his dizziness, he hears the rush of air being sliced and then there is nothing.

 

No. Now pain, only pain, white hot, as his head falls back again, though the resounding clunk of his skull is altogether very little compared to the iron in his mouth. The boy turns his head, a deep, congruent red spilling forth as rainwater does from a gargoyle, and he coughs again, ragged and wheezing, a scream erupting from his bleeding mouth—if it belongs to him, he cannot fathom from where it can come. He gurgles, chokes, strangled while leaning over the side of the slab to shower the floor with the red water.

 

Like a moat being filled, small crevices are coated as sacrifices, and the chanting is still there in the background, but his wrists are being forced down now and he cannot see—his eyes are open yet he cannot _see_ —and if his head is tilted back, he will surely drown, but there are chains, new and fine and gold, being attached to his limbs. There is fire around him, floating candles that burn as stars, and though his open sobs nearly deafen the chanting, it is only increasing in fervor; the sun has died out.

 

Jewels begin to encrust his thrashing form, a crown like thorns made of amethyst and opal draped upon his head, forced up and back and momentarily crushing his very larynx, forcing bile to the bubbling, boiling surface of his throat. He does not taste, can only smell the pungent odor of himself. There are rings being thrust onto his fingers—they bite into him, bladed and sharp, degloving his hands and leaving them as milky bone.

 

            _H E R O D / N A B H I / A D A I H_

The man is there, the damned blade held aloft, symbols glowing along the metal—they sear him when they’re transferred onto his skin, trimmed like a masking film and washed away of all impurities; his redwater flows as freedom. Sucking in breaths that do nothing to quell the panic in his chest, the pain in his oversensitive nerve endings, he is pressed down and pulled open and the words are only sounds now, the people around him only fuzzy shapes.

 

The man lifts the blade again. His eyes are as soft streetlamps. The boy sees him without seeing, mouth held open, receiving communion. He screams once more.

 

            _B A K A B / H I A D A / I H B A N_

 

The temple seems to shimmer in the fire, drunk on the boy’s blood, breathing as he does: with heavy lungs, slowly drowning as he drinks himself back in, suffocating under the unabashed gaze of the forest, the man-god that strikes him twice, thrice with the dagger. The agony is not in one place, no, it spreads like a plague, disease that eats away at him until his vocal cords seem to snap under the duress that he has placed them in, and there are only gurgles as he expels more of himself, swallows it back down, and again.

 

Another wet sound from his loins now, to match the choir around him, the decay in his emptying veins, and then another from a place lower, perhaps his feet, and his flesh is displayed as a near pelt, his bones and his muscles like sinew in the teeth—they pick him away, chipping like stone. Another stab like in darkness: there is a lacking now, ears seemingly plugged with cotton, images like colors like the fire that surrounds him.

 

            _S A R A P I / A R A I R P / R A K K I A_

_A I K K A R / P R I A R A / I P A R A S_

_M A L A C H / N V D E T O N / V S I L A R O_

_D I R E M A T / D I R E M A T / D I R E M A T_

_E L E M E L E / E L E M E L E / E L E M E L E_

_T A M E R I D / O R A L I S V / N O T E D V N_

If his eyes are closed, it makes not a difference. He shudders in his inhalations now, trembles on the exhale, ice in his gut despite the moisture on his flesh, and he is mouthing words that surely no god can hear, no worship he could offer could end this, no. There is only the certainty of terror in this forest, soft and sinful, under this crown made of crystals and this fire that floats as stars do, and the boy can smell the ozone of death creeping through the pews.

 

It enshrouds all that he is, encases him in a chill like a casket like a promise, even as the man above him plunges the happy dagger into his chest. It kisses his slashed throat and presses his body down, blanketing and soothing as release, just as poison overtakes a swallow. He is crying, he knows this, salt mixing with the hemoglobin on his face, a rattle of a breath overwhelming his very bones.

 

              _N A B H I / A D A I H / B A K A B_

_H I A D A / I H B A N / D O R E H_

_E L E M E L E / E L E M E L E / E L E M E L E_

_E L E M E L E / E L E M E L E / E L E M E L E_

*****

 

His very skeleton aches as the clouds part, a heavy, sticky kind of weight keeping him down on the soft earth from which he is born. Opening his eyes is a chore, lifting his limbs nigh impossible; he shifts instead, the earth moving on to stone, the scent of burning surrounding him, of ozone and formaldehyde, grass that shrieks as it is killed. The boy turns his head, slow as molasses, and upon attempting to open his mouth, finds that it is akin to a scab there: dried as desert sand, ripping and breaching as whales at the water’s surface do.

 

His jawbone tugs at his face until the new skin breaks away, until he is able to expel the ruin of his mouth, coagulated and congealed and emanating a sort of rot that he immediately shirks away from. His arms are unusable, he finds, attempting to rest his fingers on his chin: they remain chained, just as his tongue remains gone.

 

He makes a sound like a wounded animal, is met with a hum.

 

The boy dares not open his eyes lest this be a trick, only makes to curl in upon his naked form and crying out when he recalls that he cannot, and he ducks his head, crown still heavy upon it like dreamscapes that hide nightmares that hide lucidity in foggy harbors. He waits.

 

But the only sound is that of chains once taut falling loose, cuffs being unlocked, jewels lifting and being tossed away as trash. There is a pair of hands on his flesh, warm as the others had been cold, like icewater soothing a brand, and while one guides the pain from his body, the other rests over his eyes—a blindfold, almost, gentle in the darkness.

 

Around him, the forest is alive.

 

Alive like breathing like birds like squirrels: he can hear the rustle of leaves and the air becoming wind becoming breezes, and it is like taking a first breath after choking, like the placenta being cleaned from one’s mouth after they are born. His chin is tipped up and his mouth opens wide and the broken sob that emits from his very gut is a babe’s first greeting; his shoulders are leaves in the autumn and his hands are snakes in the grass, reaching out to grab at the wrists that the soothing hands belong to, and it is here that he opens his eyes.

 

Through the parting of long fingers, he sees: a boy, one of beauty ethereal, stands before him with the palest of skin. The slope of his nose is soft, dark eyes league-less and warm, wise; there is a smile, tiny, playing at his plush mouth, the Cupid’s bow of it like a masterpiece, a song. Long hair the color of straw cascades passed his shoulders, the boy swathed in soft golden silks, as angels would. Behind him, the shadow of wings, many of them, appears and dissipates like smoke, but the boy can only feel his hands.

 

“Poor boy,” says the creature in the lowest, sweetest of voices, “they bade me to heed their call. And heed it I have.”

 

The floor of the temple is littered with bodies. He sees this now: their blood intermingling with his own, their expressions gone and replaced with flames, weapons clutched in fists made of bone, skin having melted and run away. The man who had not been a god is in a crumpled heap at the bottom of the shallow stairs, and his eyes are not watching anymore, the lighthouses having died.

 

He releases a breath, relief washing over him.

 

The creature, the other boy, leans in to brush his forehead against his own, eyes capturing his and holding them. “They will not hurt you anymore,” he whispers. “No one shall. Be mine.”

 

Nodding is the easiest thing that he has ever done.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the words being chanted are actually taken from a book called "sacred magic of abramalin". it is the third book, chapter one. they are translated as follows:
> 
> ELEMELE - god  
> MILON - a fruit / a precious thing  
> IRAGO - a question to conduct and analyze  
> LAMAL - entirety  
> OGARI - a swallow  
> NOLIM - hidden  
> DOREH - a habitation  
> ORIRE - to rise / be born  
> RINIR - to renew  
> ERIRO - to curse  
> HEROD - shaking / trembling  
> SARAPI - to burn  
> ARAIRP - an abated river  
> RAKKIA - to become faint / soft  
> AIKKAR - to trouble / disturb  
> PRIARA - to shatter / break up  
> IPARAS - to break / divide / sunder  
> MALACH - salt / to dissolve  
> NVDETON - to strongly remove  
> VSILARO - to ripen the earth  
> DIREMAT - to encompass / include things forgotten  
> TAMERID - straight / forward  
> ORALISV - superfluous substance  
> NOTEDVN - to stretch / rule  
> NABHI - to prophesy  
> ADAIH - a bird of omen  
> BAKAB - in trouble  
> HIADA - sent forward / thrown  
> IHBAN - to give / bring
> 
> the title of the story comes from the bible, numbers 24:6, from balaam to balak, "As valleys stretched out, as gardens by the river-side; as aloes planted of the LORD, as cedars beside the waters;".
> 
> the chapter title comes from 24:8, which reads, "God who brought him forth out of Egypt is for him like the lofty horns of the wild-ox; he shall eat up the nations that are his adversaries, and shall break their bones in pieces, and pierce them through with his arrows."


	2. adagita vau-pa-ahe zodonugonu fa-a-ipe salada!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in the forest, the boy discovers the extent of the damage his body has sustained. the god makes a promise.

“I have many names,” says the creature to the boy, “but you may call me Jeonghan.”

 

The forest opens for them, as a parent welcomes a child back home, and under the dazzling light of the moon, the grasses and the dirt hold them. His bare toes welcome the cold, a new shock after the fire in the temple, the smoke in his lungs replaced with hail. Around him, a swathe of cloth envelops his form, the newness of it speaking wonders to abused flesh; he startles, glances up at the floating creature, at Jeonghan, who does not return his gaze, only raises a hand and clenches a delicate fist as the cloth grows warm, comforting, tight.

 

The breath that leaves him, the boy, is one of enchantment. He ducks his head, opening his mouth to speak words, any words, that he may know to quell the silence, yet finds that only the barest of sounds escape him. He raises a hand, confused, color rushing to his cheeks, down his neck—when he feels nothing, cannot worry the skin of his face, his feet stop of their own accord. At this point, Jeonghan is watching him, curiosity embodying his expression.

 

He looks down, the boy, his hands held out and away from his body; the moonlight captures the milk color, stained with crimson, of the bones, the way they bend as if held together by sinew and tendon that no longer exists. Snake bones expel from his knuckles, flesh in tatters, vaguely sharp at some angles—pressing the tips into his palms leaves crescent moons. His breath is stuck in his throat, in his lungs, in his mouth that is not a mouth but a cavern full of shrill cries and gravestone teeth and there is blood rushing through his head and he does not know from where these sounds come from but there are tears in his eyes again, warmth draining through him and exiting from his toes.

 

Immediately, Jeonghan is there.

 

Trembling, the boy drops to his knees, caught by the creature and at once, he is safe. A warm glow encompasses the both of them, sunlight feeding fire into Jeonghan’s eyes—many eyes, for a moment, many, too many, in rows along his forehead as if tiny crystals, and the boy sees naught but pinpricks before a blink and they are gone, but there is a coldness that speaks of death that does not abate. As a cow to a slaughter, he closes his own eyes again and again, willing away the flames, pressing his face into the creature’s shoulder, collarbone jutting out like mountain ranges, the long expanse of pretty white skin like snowflakes.

 

The entirety of him throbs, an earthquake like the pitter-patter of something worse threatening to break loose from its prison, and Jeonghan’s arms only squeeze him as if great pythons, holding him as though the bough that cradles the baby, and the shiver that runs through the boy like an electric shock only leaves the ghost of the sensation of tumbling down, down, down. He whimpers, a drowning dog, a deflating balloon, and he is only brought closer.

 

Words like promises filter through the white noise, empty ringing like church bells, and they speak of power, of gods and heroes, of an onslaught of emotion that carries through him as water does, of stories that mean nothing and end in nothing and are, in actuality, nothing at all. There is light in it, though, like holding breaths underwater, bubbles floating up to the top, and the boy can only burrow his face into the creature’s shoulder until he must come up for air.

 

Air, it relinquishes whatever vice the anxiety has on his chest, breathing as if he has not done so in days, in weeks, in lifetimes cut tragically short as lumberjacks and tree-lines, as lighthouse men and captive boys, and he shudders, full not-bodied, mouth open with heat pouring out. If he sobs, it is not heard, choking on the oxygen that sates him, clutching to Jeonghan’s silks with abandon.

 

Against his palms, dead nerves spring to life; the edges of his fingers merely catch and tear. _Destructor_ : the word hangs heavy on the boy’s palette, caught in the echo chamber of his throat. He continues to weep, tears unshed now falling into otherworldly clothes, and the sweet nothings from the creature are meager heartbeats now, spoken to match panic attacks—claustrophobia, closing in, his chest his lungs his eyes like pressure, sinus headaches, his head is tipped back and water flows and he is immersed, baptized in ash.

 

They remain like that, in the winding forest that dare not disturb them, until his breath has stuttered and calmed, his fists unclenching and the whites of his knuckles falling back to a dark tan, his eyes peering up in silent prayers as if searchlights in the fog. Jeonghan looks at him, expression unreadable.

 

“See,” he finally says, one arm relinquishing the boy’s waist to gesture beside them, and when the boy pulls away, follows his limb, he finds that the earth has been replaced with a small river, slotted into the ground like a fault line, the trees having cleared and been replaced with toadstools of differing colors, lights like fairies flickering back and forth amongst them. The boy glances back at Jeonghan, again at the river, hesitant. “See yourself,” Jeonghan offers, soft.

 

On hands and knees, he crawls, extricating himself with difficulty from the mass of limbs that hold him, and the grass kisses his skin just as the rocks do; the way the water swims through itself, the splashes of body upon body until it becomes simple white noise, froth and then nothing, and the fish do not come out at night. He peers through the current, the moon his reflection, and then—

 

Scars crisscross over his flesh. His mouth is stained red-red-red as smudged lipstick as remnants of a bloody meal. He opens it, the darkness a cacophony like his breathing. On his neck, a gash remains open, naught but a whisper absconding from it, the remnants of his insides continuing to burn inside the temple a long way away from here. Skeleton fingers graze it, the flesh pulling as rubber as solids meeting liquid.

 

He shivers, blinks his pinhole eyes, impossibly dark: there is no light here, breath shuddering out, punched from his lungs and exiting his neck. His chest yields to itself, his flesh blackened at the edges; his ribcage protrudes amongst the pitter-pattering of his bulletproof heart, and as jewels, he is glistening, listening, _glistening_ with the way Jeonghan’s cloak appears to encase him in glass—a priceless artifact, the boy allows his hands to whisper over ancient memories, of voices that once sang praises. A whimper is elicited, and if he holds his breath just as the dagger had held his tongue, he can almost hear the way the downy hair on the back of his neck stands up.

 

He straightens, spine a lightning strike in winter where the sharpness of sensations enchants the way he moves, on his haunches as a dog as a child pulling at the tautness of his dressings lest they be attached to him, a righteousness erupting from his veins, from his very existence—he rises, rises like the Great Wave had, and in his reflection, no, in his hands remains air.

 

Cut. God, he has been cut and all at once, it floods back to him: the pain, the _pain_ red hot like charcoal the morning after, an emptiness replaced by the blood filling his mouth, and his fingers graze the puckered remnants of stitches that were never stitches on his thighs, his knees. He takes a breath, and another, until he is certain that he will burst, choking back the language that has abandoned him, teeth biting a useless mouth.

 

Jeonghan behind him, a hand on his shoulder like God, an angel, the warmth seeping into his very marrow something he likens to new firewood, hearths, popcorn he may have once tasted. The boy exhales, gasping, coughing, hands scrambling up and behind him to simply hold on, as if the purchase is enough, as if the creature behind him can replace that which has been lost from him, stolen, answers spewing forth from the crack in this dam—hopelessness ebbs away and into this warmth, and o, Jeonghan is but a savior when his palm finds the boy’s jaw, his cheek, his chin.

 

“Your name,” he whispers and the boy listens with a reverence. “What is it?”

 

The boy like birth moves with the veil of cloth dragging behind him, clinging but ripping, a shroud of membrane, of placenta, and it is with a sense of urgency that his fingernails scratch at the dirt below him. He carves the characters with care that is not befitting of a broken man, oxygen depleted in this desperation that calls to him, this boy with a _name_ , yes, a no-name name, and to be understood, _God_ or _gods_ or whosoever is listening to him— _Jeonghan_ —yes, he is standing, spreading his arms as if to present his work. His eyes are wide as dinner plates.

 

                                                                                                            _Seung Cheol_

 

When Jeonghan softly repeats it, walking towards him, the boy, Seungcheol, can only nod, an animalistic sound—high pitched and wanting, waning like the moon—escaping from his bitten, bloodied mouth. Jeonghan smiles, gazes down at the characters in the dirt, this name, a title. “‘To win fairly,’” he murmurs, tilts his head to one side. “Ironic, don’t you think, that you didn’t.”

 

Seungcheol shivers, casts his gaze downward.

 

Jeonghan chuckles, a pleasant sound, musical, and it is suddenly too close, inside, enrapturing the very attention that the boy seems to offer, as if his eyes are the only ones, as if the blackness and the dullness does not supersede the worship, the promises, and there are many arms and then only two wrapping themselves around Seungcheol’s svelte form. A god to his disciple, a mouth like heaven pressed to his temples, against sweat-matted hair, and Seungcheol is shivering, kneecaps knocking into each other.

 

The coldness is not the culprit, only a side effect.

 

“My child,” whispers Jeonghan, “oh, beautiful boy, they shan’t hurt you again.”

 

And Seungcheol, God, the gasp that emanates from his own deadened soul elicits a great awe, veneration that translates to long, spindly fingers creep-crawling up the knobs of his spine, to a stronger grip that is given and returned, to how he draws back to look Jeonghan in the eye; a color akin to brass meets his gaze, and Seungcheol can only purse his lips, nod twice.

 

“You are _mine_ ,” says the creature like an exorcism. “Boy whom I have brought back, you are mine and only mine.”

 

Another nod of the head.

 

And Jeonghan, oh, he leans in, a palm gripping the back of Seungcheol’s skull with a desperation that seems to speak of ancient tales like sacrifices in temples in the forest and carving a name like a promise like a devotion into river water mud, and his hands are still stained brown, the visible bones covered in earth, but he still holds onto silk, clutches it as a treasure. Their foreheads meet, and Jeonghan is fire, burning, scarlet.

 

A gust of wind, tornadoes and hurricanes and devils, bursts around them, a popped balloon, and their clothing is tugged upon by the hands of little spirits, and they pay no mind, for their meeting place begins to capture the very light of the moon above them, beams like fingers reaching out to touch. Seungcheol breathes in sharply.

 

Jeonghan whispers with a million different voices, “Their souls, their minds, their cores: they belong to me. Boy who survived the blaze, boy who exists between the living and the dead, bring them to me, for _you_ are mine. Only mine.”

 

Seungcheol clutches the creature’s silks even tighter, a roar bellowing in the wind, and he dares not close his eyes, avert his gaze, lest he miss the way in which they spark, many eyes and then only two, a mouth that stretches until it severs Jeonghan’s face in twain and then the plush pinkness he had seen before, shark’s teeth in rows and then nothing and Seungcheol’s breath hitches, threatens to pinch shut.

 

“ _You are mine_ ,” repeats Jeonghan.

 

And Seungcheol mouths, _I am yours_ against the wind, and all falls silent.

 

No movement, no shift, no breaths: Jeonghan looks at him and Seungcheol looks back, and the layers are shed until they are nothing but raw spirits, energies that intertwine, and there is a monumental ache somewhere in the pit of Seungcheol’s stomach, one that begs to climb out from the acid bath and crawl up his esophagus and his mouth is parting and there is so much to say to this creature with blood on his hands, to say from the boy with blood on his mouth, and Jeonghan is reaching to mold their fingers together, flesh to bone, and he raises it to his mouth.

 

A flash blinds the boy, image replaced with a shark’s mouth, Cheshire smile, pain—and he blinks and there is only a kiss there on the center of his hand, and the fire, the flame, it centers there and it burns but Seungcheol does not fight it, does not struggle, despite the whine that bubbles up from his throat, the blur of his vision.

 

A triangle that crosses itself at the bottom and then again even further down appears in a charred brown sickness, the final tails curling and centered by another triangle. It simmers, appears to boil on his flesh before sinking back down as corpses in a bog, and underneath this kiss from a god is a heat like energy like life that drains and refills, ebbs and flows as a wave does, and as it erodes the confines of his skin, lets loose the storms of rapture, Jeonghan’s hand covers the mark.

 

“ _Mine_ ,” he says again, softer than a spider’s walk.

 

Seungcheol can only nod and match his gaze once more, a fierce brass meeting the blackest void, squeeze the link that Jeonghan has gifted him, bestowed with a magic that seems to thrum with their closeness, an artillery in his smile, a nuclear missile in his eyes.

 

When it explodes, Seungcheol knows this: he will be there, being nothing but his.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the chapter title comes from the satanic bible. it's part of the second enochian key, which is meant to pay homage to the lusts that sustain the continuance of life, recognizing our earthly heritage. translated to english, the sentence reads, "can the wings of the winds hear your voices of wonder?"


End file.
